


No Rose Without a Thorn

by morningsound15



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Family Dynamics, Fluff, Pete's World, Regeneration, Rose/Thirteen endgame, basically Rose/every regeneration of The Doctor from 10 on, some light drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 16:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningsound15/pseuds/morningsound15
Summary: Rose goes to sleep one night next to her husband, John Smith, the man she has loved for going on three years now, and wakes up the next morning face-to-face with a complete stranger.She just about falls straight out of bed.**Or: Whenever the Doctor regenerates, his human double over in Pete’s World does, too.They all try to deal with whatever that might mean.





	No Rose Without a Thorn

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been wanting to write something like this since the Thirteenth Doctor was first announced. Thought I’d finally take a stab at it.
> 
> A short little drabble-y one-shot that deals with Rose and the Metacrisis Doctor and all the other Doctors who came after him (including Thirteen). Basically just an excuse to get Rose + Thirteen together don’t @ me.

________________

Considering the fact that John and the Doctor are completely different people (completely different _species,_ even), different men inhabiting different bodies who live in different universes, separated by time and space and dimensions and portals and a million and a half impossibilities — considering all of that information, there should be no conceivable way for them to still be biologically connected. There should be no feasible way that the actions of one, the growth or aging or regeneration of one should in any way, shape, or form impact the other.

And yet… and yet here they are.

(She supposes she should have expected this. If she’s learned one thing from her time with the Doctor, it’s that the universe doesn’t particularly tend to care about impossibilities, logic, or reasoning.)

Rose goes to sleep one night next to her husband, John Smith, the man she has loved for going on three years, now, and wakes up the next morning face-to-face with a complete stranger.

She just about falls straight out of bed.

________________

It’s a confusing morning, to say the least. And Rose is angry enough to see red. “How could he not have _told us_ this would happen?” she fumes, furiously pacing across their bedroom floor. John stands in front of the bathroom mirror and slowly pokes at his cheeks, his nose, tugs on the roots of his hair. He doesn’t seem to be hearing her, but that matters very little to Rose. “I mean, did he _know,_ and just not _say_ anyfing?”

“I rather think he didn’t,” John says as he pulls his lips back to examine his teeth.

Rose looks this new man up and down, regarding him. He’s her husband, yes — of that she is undoubtedly certain — but he’s also… _not_. Not entirely. He has John’s mannerisms still, and as far as she can tell his way of speaking hasn’t changed. And he looks at her the same way, that unfathomable mixture of fondness and awe and devotion that he’s always had in his eyes whenever he gazed at her before.

But there’s also something different, something obviously and noticeably _changed_ about him. It’s subtle —were it not for how well she knows him, how in-tune she is to his emotions and his body and his thoughts, she might have missed it — but it’s definitely there. He holds himself differently, shoulders quirked one higher than the other and head always slightly tilted. He seems to have more energy about him. John’s last body (it feels so strange to think of it that way) was excitable, yes, but it never had quite as much of this energetic thrumming about it.

His voice is different. That’s the thing she can’t stop noticing. His voice doesn’t sound the same as it used to.

(She’d always so loved John’s voice. The way it dipped, solemnly, when he told her he loved her; the way it seemed to caress her name like its speaker found joy simply in the _idea_ of her; the way it slipped into languages, into repeated sayings and well-loved phrases, like it was second-nature. She’d always so loved the timbre and the quality and the way it slid from between his lips.)

(She wonders if it will say the same things, now. _Allons-y_ and _Brilliant_ and _I’m sorry_ and _I love you. I have always loved you._ Things she’s gotten used to hearing as much as she’s gotten used to taking her morning tea with just a dash of milk. She wonders if he will want to say the same things to her, now, that he did only a few short hours ago.)

Rose can’t stop staring at him. She knows she should, knows that she should tear her attention away from the stranger in her bathroom and actually _try_ to get to the bottom of all of this, but she just… _can’t_. There are things they need to do, tests they should run, experts they should consult. They need to speak to UNIT, that’s for certain. Make sure the two realities are still fully isolated, that the very fabric of the universe isn’t crumbling around them. They need to buy him new clothes — this body is taller than the last, a little broader in the shoulders, and his sleep shirt is looking more than a little snug where it wraps around his torso. There are a million and a half _pressing_ concerns that need to be addressed _right away._

But… _God,_ just _look at him._

This is not how she pictured her life going.

Rose sighs, very deeply. John glances up from his hands, which he had been studying with rather rapt attention only a few moments ago. “Well this complicates things a bit,” Rose says, at his questioning look.

He purses his lips, thoughtful. “Yes, I suppose it does. Difficult to explain. You’ve still got the same husband, only his face has changed.” He hums thoughtfully. “Imagine the confusion.”

She groans. She hadn’t even _thought_ of that part. “Mum’s gonna _love_ this.”

John hums softly to himself again. “I imagine she will.”

________________

“So,” John begins later, over coffee and a shared plate of toast. It feels strangely normal; strangely domestic. Very much not _of immediate concern._ She wonders why John seems so calm about this, when her own stomach feels like it just might be stuck twisting in on itself for the rest of time. He clears his throat for a moment and meets her eyes very steadily. “So, what we should do?”

“Wha’, _me_?” Rose gapes at him. “What are you asking _me_ for? _You’re_ the expert on—on all—” she gestures down his body— “ _this._ ”

“Technically, there’s never been a _this_ before. This is as new to me as it is to you.” _That_ doesn’t do very much to ease her mind. John takes a breath. “But I think, realistically… this transition matters more for your life than mine. As far as most of the world is concerned, I’m an entirely new man. The old John Smith is as good as dead.” Rose knows it’s only a figure of speech, that he’s only exaggerating, but still, she feels a little sick to her stomach to hear it said like that. He continues on as if he _hasn’t_ just shaken the very foundation she’s built her life upon. “So, really…” he says— “whatever decision we make should be the one _you_ want to make.” He smiles at her, rather genially. It feels a touch inappropriate, given the circumstances. “So what should we do about all this?”

After a few long moments, Rose shrugs. “Make up a divorce?”

________________

“You’re younger, now,” Rose says contemplatively from her seat on the passenger side of their car. They’re making their way very leisurely in the direction of UNIT. John is whistling very normally, very steadily, very softly under his breath. As if he doesn’t have a care in the world. He turns to her now, and cocks his head. “I mean you…” she is quick to explain— “you look younger. I think.”

“I feel younger. Look at this forehead, this chin.” He examines himself in the rear-view mirror, pulling faces to test the elasticity of his new skin. “I look rather good. Don’t you think?” He turns away from his reflection only to whip back around at once. It’s a silly action, like he’s trying to catch his reflection shifting while his back is turned.

Rose squints at him. “Am I older than you?”

“Huh?”

“I think I’m older than you. I _look_ older than you.”

“Well in all fairness, I _have_ only existed for a few years.”

“You know wha’ I mean.”

“I have the memories of someone who has been alive for centuries, Rose. I think that makes me still quite a bit older than you.”

“But is tha’ how everyone else is going to see it? If my face is older than yours… What does _tha’_ say about me? Am I now the kind of woman who marries younger men?”

“I think you’re allowed to be any kind of woman you want to be.”

She rolls her eyes, just a bit. “Thanks for the feminism, but ’s not wha’ I meant.”

He sighs, and for the very first time Rose can see a weariness in him — a discomfort and a soft, pained, resigned sort of sadness to the slump of his shoulders. It startles her. Disquiets her. But she blinks, and then it’s gone again. She has to wonder if she’d only imagined it.

“Yes,” he says, unbelievably soft, “yes I know.”

________________

“I don’t think I should go by ‘John’, anymore,” he says that night, when they’re lying silently side-by-side in their shared bed. They look up at the ceiling, not at each other. Something about that makes this all feel much easier.

Rose tries not to swallow too loudly. “You want to change your name?”

“You can’t very well go from being married to one John Smith to another,” he says, matter-of-factly. “ _That_ would say a great deal more about you than whether or not I’m _younger_.”

Rose has to chuckle. “Fair point.”

“Besides, I don’t… I don’t _feel_ like a John, anymore.” He says it softly, quietly. Like it’s something he feels but is too afraid to admit. “Does that make sense?”

Rose turns her head towards him. He keeps his gaze focused on the ceiling, expression carefully blank. “I don’t think you look like one,” she admits too, her voice just as quiet on the night air as his.

He turns towards her now, and in the darkness she can just manage to pick out the shine in his eyes. “What do I look like, then?”

She squints, her eyes narrowing in on his chin, his forehead, his eyes and lips. Trying to pick out his features in the dark. “Hard to say,” she says after a moment. “Matt?”

He pulls a face almost immediately. “No, that’s not right; that’s not right at all. Matt? Yuck. No. No no no.”

“So… that’s a no?”

He shoots her a look that’s all the answer she needs. Rose chuckles and allows him to ponder the question himself, for a little while; he’s always enjoyed the way solitude sometimes helps him think.

She closes her eyes in the quiet that follows and tries to let herself fall asleep. But it’s harder than she expects. Her thoughts are spinning too quickly in her head, running fast around and around each other in a way that makes her feel dizzy, lost confused. She tries to keep her breathing even and her pulse steady, so as not to worry the man next to her, but there’s a panic rising in her chest as she starts to think of all the ways their lives are about to get more complicated, as she starts to think of all the ways this changes just about everything they’d assumed about their future. How are they meant to—

John — or, rather, the-man-formerly-known-as-John — reaches over to her, and Rose’s mind immediately clears. His hand glides over the skin of her arm, starting at her shoulder and tracing down, down, down until his fingers tangle with hers where they rest on top of their comforter. Rose squeezes his hand nearly as tightly as he squeezes hers.

That’s how they finally fall asleep.

________________

“Phillip.”

Rose looks up from the file she’d been perusing absent-mindedly. She pushes her specs a bit higher up the bridge of her nose and quirks her head in her husband’s direction. “What’s that?”

“I like the name Phillip. It sounds good; right. Strong name. Good name.”

“Boring name.”

“And ‘John Smith’ wasn’t?”

“I’ll call you whatever you want, love. It doesn’t matter to me. If you like Phillip, then Phillip it is.”

“Yes.” He nods once, seemingly determined. “Then that’s settled. Phillip Tyler it is.”

Rose can’t stop the short laugh that bursts from between her lips. At his almost-affronted look, she quickly stifles it. “Sorry,” she apologizes with a grimace. “But… you want to take _my_ name?”

“I’ve always liked your name. It’s a good name.” Rose still feels a little baffled. After a moment, he continues, with his eyes down and his ears suspiciously pink, “ _And,_ if I’m going to keep changing faces, I’d like at least _one_ thing about me to stay the same.”

And that is, for all intents and purposes, rather all the conversation they need to have on the subject.

________________

He has a rather peculiar fixation on hats and bowties, this go-round. All things considered, though, Rose thinks he really could look _much_ worse.

At least he’s still got that cute, dorky-professor thing going for him. That’s something she always really liked about her husband. He’s got the brains of ten men (maybe more) but with all the passion and enthusiasm of a human with too much time on his hands. That’s a rather good description of him, actually, now that she thinks about it.

It takes a little getting used to. He doesn’t really like the same foods, and he still has next-to-no interest in watching shit telly with her on the weekends. He always asks her to pick up fish fingers at the shop, which is somehow confusing and unexpected and perfectly reasonable all at once. But he’s still her husband. He still loves his work at UNIT, still likes to pin up pictures from their travels on the wall of their study, still takes his tea with just a dash of milk, still drives her mum absolutely up the wall. He still looks at her as if she alone hung the stars in the sky.

He still looks up at them, sometimes, with this desperate, aching _longing_ on his face. He talks of other worlds and past adventures with equal parts zeal and heartbreak. It still does things to Rose, to hear him speak of it — still makes her stomach clench and her heart burn in her chest for all the things he’s had to give up; all the things he’s _chosen_ to give up. For her. She sees him sometimes, curled up on the ground next to the large bay windows in their sitting room, the ones that look out over the London skyline, his head tilted up towards stars invisible to them because of the surrounding light pollution. Sometimes, she’ll walk over to him and wrap a blanket around his shoulders, lean her head against his chest and look up at them, too.

________________

She really, _really_ likes his new hair. There’s something about the length, the way she can thread her fingers through it, tug on it and yank on it while they’re kissing, embracing, making love. She loves the way he pulls away from her, breathless and with hair _absolutely_ debouched.

It makes her nearly swoon. Does things to her stomach and her heart and the space between her legs.

Change is strange, and difficult a lot of the time, but some changes she _definitely_ doesn’t mind.

________________

That can’t figure out what caused this regeneration — if they can even call it that. Because from what they can tell it’s _not_ a regeneration; not in the true sense of the word. As far as they can tell his cells haven’t changed, they haven’t regenerated, they’ve just… shifted about a bit. He still only has one heart, still has the same blood type as before. He’s still _human,_ and as far as they can tell he’ll continue to _remain_ human. He still ages (from what the UNIT doctors can tell, at least; too difficult to say whether or not he’s exactly the same age as before, only that his new body is, in fact, continuing to progress in time), still gets sick with colds and flus and other common illnesses that never bothered the Old Him (the Time Lord Him).

There’s simply no explanation for it. Nothing in the science of this world or any others (any others they’re aware of, that is) to explain how this happened.

It doesn’t make Rose feel better about it. Actually, it makes her feel a lot worse.

Phillip holds her hand and smiles at her and tells her “Everything will be alright, Rose,” like he _actually_ believes it will be. All she can do is smile back at him and hope against hope that she isn’t looking at a bomb just waiting to go off.

________________

She desperately hopes this will be the last transformation. She desperately, _desperately_ doesn’t want to lose what she’s built with this man she adores more than words can describe.

She loves Phillip; loves him more and more each day. His humour is quick and sharp, his laughter easy and warming. She loves his hair and his strange sense of style and his chin the way he stands and the way he claps his hands together right as he discovers something exciting, some breakthrough he tries to explain to her with his mouth that moves at a thousand miles per hour.

She loves him. She’s terrified of losing him. She never wants him to transform again; never wants to take a gamble on another face or another body or another man who is the same as he’s always been and yet never _quite_ the same at all.

________________

Of course, she doesn’t get her wish.

________________

“I doubt very much that people are going to believe I’m your husband,” this version of him says grumpily, tugging at the necktie that’s pulled just a bit too tight around his throat. They’d been in the middle of the office, an innocuous day of work just like any other, when Phillip suddenly gasped and within a few moments (as Rose watched, stricken, heart-in-her-throat) his face had shifted in front of her very eyes until— “Your _father_ , maybe.”

“I think you might be older than my father.”

“I’m as old as I’ve ever been.”

“Ah, so 8, then?” Her stomach feels like it’s bottomed out. There’s concrete running through her veins. She cracks a joke because she doesn’t know what else to say. What else _can_ she say? There’s a stranger in front of her, wearing her husband’s clothes but with an unfamiliar scowl around his mouth — the mouth that Rose _knows_ prefers to smile — and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

He huffs. “I don’t appreciate that.”

Rose takes a breath and tries to stop the way her hands shake as she reaches out to brush at some of the dust lingering on his coat. “This you is going to be a real grump, isn’t he?”

“Apparently so.”

“Well. Let’s hope we don’t try to kill each other.”

________________

It is, in hindsight, hauntingly prescient of her.

________________

This transformation is more difficult than the others she’s experienced; more difficult than the last one they weathered together. With each new face comes a slightly-altered personality. She’s always known this. It hasn’t ever been as serious as it had been with the Doctor, where a new face and a new body seemed to shift every aspect of his personality, turning a cynical man into a wisecracking one, a man full of fire and indignant fury into someone who rather boiled, hiding his anger beneath layers and layers of masks, only letting it out in the most extreme circumstances. Her husband’s changes are never quite so severe as that. John and Phillip were not very different, when it came down to it. She could spot their unique qualities as easily as she could trace the fabric of the same man, running constant between them. But this time… this time is…

He chooses Devon, this time. She’s not sure why. She’s never sure why he picks his names. It doesn’t seem to matter, really — none of them fit properly — but he’s still human, still a man who works in an office, who lives in and contributes to a society, who needs identification to drive and to get on an aeroplane and so he needs an _actual_ name, not just a title.

(He’s never liked her calling him ‘Doctor’. The first few months they lived together here she would slip up, occasionally — when she was pulling herself out of a deep slumber or when she absentmindedly asked him to pass her the morning post. But she doesn’t do it anymore. And it’s somehow easier, not to feel that pang of _longing,_ that pang of _loss_ and _could have been_ and _not the same_ with the new faces. These new faces her husband wears aren’t the Doctor’s face; not to her. Not the way John’s had been. It had made loving Phillip somehow easier.)

(She never quite stopped feeling guilty about that.)

________________

Though she lived with Phillip for nearly 3 years, it felt like the blink of an eye when compared to her first two weeks with Devon.

He tries to explain that to her, too. “Time is both stretched and collapsed,” he says to her, when she tries to express how she’s feeling, this weird, twisted cycle of confusion and anxiety she can’t seem to escape. “It doesn’t really move in a straight line. Years can feel like months. Weeks feel like years. The past is smashed into the future which folds into the present.”

And that all might be true, but it doesn’t exactly make her _feel_ any better about it.

She used to like him explaining things. It made her feel smarter, more intelligent for just being in his company. She liked the way his eyes would brighten anytime he discovered a new topic that interested her, anytime she asked him a question he knew the answer to (which was the case for most questions she asked him). His head would perk up and his mouth would pull wide and he’d launch into a long, convoluted explanation that sometimes left her more confused than when they had started, but that hardly mattered to her. Hearing his excitement, his passion for the subject, was almost more important to her than the actual truth behind it.

But now that he’s this new man, older and somehow grouchier and sullener, more wizened, it really only feels patronizing. Like she’s getting lectured by a no-nonsense teacher, rather than her husband sharing bits of himself with her. And Rose has never particularly liked school.

It’s just… it’s harder than she expected it to be. His transition from being John to being Phillip had been an adjustment, to be sure, but she _had_ adjusted.

She worries that that might not be the case, this time ‘round.

She thinks he can tell. She thinks he can see how she’s feeling, pick out her moods even when she tries her best to hide them. She thinks he can see the way her mouth pulls tight at the corners whenever he’s a little short with her, can see the way she sometimes has to force herself not to shrug out from under his arm when they’re walking together down the street.

It makes his eyes do something strange, something unfamiliar to her.

His mood doesn’t generally improve.

________________

She and Devon don’t get along as well, these days. It’s hard to figure why — maybe because of the age difference. He’s self-conscious of how he looks (older and wrinkling, with grey hair instead of his usual brown), and this body doesn’t work as well as the previous two had. He can’t stay out as late as she can, can’t go out drinking with her or go on long, extended trips like they used to do. He frowns at himself in the mirror, sometimes, when he sees them standing side-by-side. Like he’s trying to see something in their reflections that isn’t there anymore.

It’s hard in a way things with him haven’t ever been, before.

Rose wakes up each morning petrified that they’re only one bad row away from falling apart completely.

________________

The frustration he seems to feel builds and builds until he can’t hold it in any longer.

“I’m not the man you want, Rose,” he says one night to her, fingers clenching into fists against their kitchen table. “I’m not the man you deserve. I’ve done things. Terrible things. Things worse than you could possible know. I—”

“Well so have I.” She reaches across the table and puts her hands over his, tries to smooth out the way they’re tensed. He doesn’t shrug her off but he doesn’t relax, either. Rose tries not to let it bother her. “We’ve both done bad things, Devon; and you know wha’? I would have done a hundred times worse, if I had to do it all over again. I would have done anything to get back to you. To find you again. Keep you safe.”

“Not me,” he says quietly. “The Doctor.”

Rose’s heart lurches in her chest. It feels too much like the truth, too much like things she never wanted to admit out loud. She shakes her head vehemently and tries not to let her words taste bitter on her tongue. “ _You,_ Devon. Not him. _You’re_ the man I love. He was… from another lifetime. I was a kid when I met him, I didn’t know what—”

“Never really gone, though, is he?” Devon’s eyes meet hers, and Rose can see a darkness to them; a storm brewing just beneath the surface, intense and angry and yet still controlled. Quietly-contained. They’re eyes she hasn’t seen in a long time — a decade or so, maybe more. They’re the eyes of the Doctor; _her_ Doctor. The one she met when she was nineteen and working in a shop and floundering with nothing to do and no future in sight, no prospects and no drive and no desire to see the world or try to save it.

He looks at her and suddenly she’s nineteen again, a stupid girl working in a stupid shop and she feels like she can’t breathe.

“I see the way you look at me,” Devon says softly. For all the anger burning in his eyes, he’s never really been _cross_ with her; he’s never directed his anger _towards_ her. She thinks it’s more likely that he’s angry at nothing in particular, at everything around them, rather than at _her_ specifically. “For a moment, right when we wake up: you have stars in your eyes. Like I could take you to see them. Like I could be the man you fell in love with, the one who took you on adventures and helped you save the universe. Like I could give you half of the life I know you want.”

“I don’t _want_ that life anymore,” Rose says, and though she thinks it should feel like more of a lie she finds as the words are coming out of her mouth that she _believes_ them. More than she expected to. Maybe she really _has_ grown up. “I’ve said… I’ve always said that. We’re settled. We’re _happy_. I love what we have.”

“You love what you _think_ you could have.”

“Don’t _tell me_ what I want. You have _no_ right to speak for me. You have no right to say—”

“You don’t love me, like this,” he cuts her off abruptly. “You don’t. You _can’t_. Don’t try to deny it.”

“ _This_ is why you’ve been so stubborn? You think I don’t _love you_ enough?” He doesn’t answer her. Rose doesn’t know if she wants to scoff or scream or cry. “How can you think that about me? I’m your _wife,_ Devon; I’ve been your wife for five years. You think that’s going to change just because you’ve got a bit of grey hair?”

“It’s not my age, Rose. It’s _me_. I’m finally realizing that you deserve much better than me. So much better. A man who can be with you without thinking of all the things he might be missing.”

Rose recoils as if she’s been burned. “Are you joking right now? Is tha’… is that what you think, when you’re with me? Is that—” she stops abruptly, her throat too thick to force out the rest of the words. It takes her a moment of grappling with her voice in order to whisper out, hoarse and uncomfortable, “Is that all I _am_ to you?”

He looks down at the table and doesn’t meet her eyes.

Rose walks out the front door and doesn’t come back for three days.

________________

He comes to her at Pete and Jackie’s house, his hair looking rumpled and unkempt and like he hasn’t showered in several days. She opens the door to him and folds her arms over her chest, not letting him inside but not outright banishing him, either.

He looks sheepish where he stands in front of her, and older than she’s seen him look in years. Somewhere between a reprimanded schoolboy and a man too old and tired to reasonably hold onto grudges any longer.

When he apologizes, it’s done quietly. “I’m sorry, Rose. I lashed out at you. I was… I was angry. And hurt. And I’m scared. I’m scared that I’m going to be this man forever. Surly, angry. Old. Have I cut our time together in half? How long does this body have left? Is it long enough for us to have… to do everything we want to do? Am I just going to drive you away before then?”

“Relationships are hard, Devon. Tha’ doesn’t mean you get to hurt me on purpose. Don’t try to force me to leave you just because you’re afraid I might decide to do it on my own. Tha’ isn’t fair. It isn’t _right_.”

“You’re right. That’s not the answer. No, that’s never the answer.” He reaches out for her, takes her hands between his own, his skin weathered and rough where before it used to be soft. “Kindness,” he says seriously, holding her hands tightly in his, “kindness is everything. We must always, _always,_ be kind. I’m sorry that I forgot that.”

“Oh, yeah?” She tugs her hands away from his almost at once. “That your big philosophy, now? ‘Be kind’? Yet you can’t even hug me in the morning. What sort of kindness is _that_?”

He looks down at the ground between them, and his expression is almost guilty. If he had been in one of his previous bodies, with one of his previous faces, Rose might almost have believed the feeling was genuine. She doesn’t trust it on this face. She tries not to think about what that might mean for them. “That’s… I don’t know if I can do the same things for you that I did before. I don’t think that’s who I am, anymore.”

“Yeah,” she says coolly, leaning away from him, trying to put as much space between them as possible without withdrawing completely. Anger overtakes the sadness she feels burning a hole through her stomach. Anger to cover up the way she wants to scream, the way she wants to cry, the way she can feel sickness and the desire to be ill roiling away within her. “Yeah, I can see that.”

________________

A few weeks later, she moves back in, and he moves out.

________________

“What have you turned into?” she asks him one night over dinner, on one of the nights where they’ve decided to try to be civil with each other and work through the problems that have been lying dormant between them for months.

He just looks across the table at her, his eyes impossibly sad. “I don’t know,” he answers her honestly. “I just don’t know.”

For the first time in all of their many years together, Rose looks at the face across from hers and sees a man she thought she had long-lost: a man broken down and defeated by the world around him, angry and sullen and cold and aloof and far-away. Gone is the man who used to kiss her lightly on the temple and tell her he would never leave her again; gone is the man who used to grab her hand as he rushed her through their home to show her one of the gadgets he’d spent all week tinkering on.

She doesn’t know who this man in front of her is, but for the first time she begins to seriously question if he’s still her husband at all.

________________

The year she spends living alone is the longest year of her life.

________________

But then, just when it seems like everything between them has finally crumbled beyond repair…

________________

Unexpectedly, in the middle of the fall, there’s a knock at Rose’s front door. The figure who greets her when she finally pulls it open is a curious sight indeed.

“Oh,” Rose breathes out, her eyes wide and already growing little wet, without her even noticing.

“What is it?” The person-who-used-to-be-Devon asks nervously. “Is it… bad? Am I ginger?” He frowns at the words. Clears his throat. “What’s wrong with mah voice?”

“You’re… a woman.”

His— _her_ eyes widen rather comically. “Am I? Does it suit me?”

Rose can only stare at her, mouth agape. She blinks a few times and tries not to stutter. “Wha’… what are you _doing_ here? I haven’t… it’s been a _month._ I haven’t seen you in a _month_ and you show up like—”

“I came over, quick as I could,” Devon says nervously. She’s got short blonde hair now and she’s wearing a ridiculous suit that in _no way_ fits her, either in terms of size or style. “I felt the change starting, and I knew I just… I’ve never done this alone, before. It’s always been with you. And I thought…” she shifts on her feet, “I think I jus’ needed ya.”

Rose doesn’t say another thing. She pushes the door open wider and lets her walk into their shared home for the first time in nearly six months.

________________

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. ‘s not your fault.”

“I should have warned you this was a possibility. I knew it might happen. I just… hoped it wouldn’t.”

“What, you never _wanted_ to be a woman? Somehow I feel offended.”

“I never wanted you to have to deal with…” the woman looks down at herself, then back up at Rose. She gestures down her body, as if that’s explanation in and of itself. Maybe it is, in some way. “I thought… I thought maybe I would just keep getting lucky.”

“I do wish you had told me. Might have made this a little less surprising.”

“I’m sorry. I am.” She sits down across from Rose at their kitchen table. (She can’t think of it as anything but ‘theirs’, even now. They haven’t lived together in a year, and still everything in this flat is inextricably tied to this impossible woman sitting in front of her.) “I… Rose, I understand if you— need some time. To process all of this.” She swallows a bit, and bites her lip. Her hands find Rose’s on the top of the table and she squeezes lightly. “I do still hope that, if I can’t be your husband, at the very least I can still be your friend. I know we haven’t talked about this… about _us,_ seriously, in months. And I know we have a lot of things we still need to discuss. But if it’s too much for you, I—”

“My wife.”

She blinks a few times, her face blank. “Sorry?”

“You aren’t my husband anymore, you’re my wife. I guess we should both start getting used to saying that.”

“Your…” She shakes her head, as if she can’t quite believe it.  “You… still want to be with me?”

“I’m still angry with you. You _can’t_ just disappear on me like that, alright? Not if we’re going to make this work.”

She nods her head very quickly. “Yes. Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“And I’m sorry, too. This is a two-way street we’ve been on, and I’ve been a terrible help about it all, too. ‘s not just you to blame.”

“I made things incredibly difficult for you.”

“I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, either.” Rose squeezes her fingers tightly. “Are you the same person I’ve loved for the past ten years?”

A tiny nod. “Yes.”

Rose’s breath hitches in her throat. “And… do you still love me?”

The woman across from her releases a small, shaky breath. “Yes,” she whispers on the exhale. “Until my dying day.”

Rose draws their hands up to her lips and presses a firm kiss to her knuckles. “It’ll be an adjustment,” she whispers against her skin, “I can’t pretend that it won’t be. But you’re the person I married, and… and I love you. I always will.” Rose smiles, a little shakily. “We might have to work back up to the sex bit, though.”

“Oh. I hadn’t… I wasn’t really thinking that far ahead.” She looks down at her new body and frowns at it. “I don’t know how to have sex as a woman.”

“I don’t know how to have sex _with_ a woman. I suppose we’ll learn together.” Rose clears her throat. “Um… but maybe after I’ve had a chance to get used to… all this. It’s— it’s a bigger change than the last few.”

“I was hoping maybe we could start with dinner?”

Rose grins. “‘s long as you’re buying.”

________________

Jackie takes one look at the pair of them and sighs deeply. “Again?” she asks, her voice laced with fatigue.

“‘ello, Jackie!” Clare waves brightly, with the hand not clutched in Rose’s.

Jackie sniffs and looks her up and down. “Well, at least you’re a reasonable age, this time.”

“ _Mum_.”

“What? I’m only saying. Your last look was _much_ more controversial. You wouldn’t _believe_ the way some of my friends spoke about the two of you.” She pauses, seems to consider for a moment. “Reckon they’ll have a bit more to say now.”

“Well, we’re off to a great start,” Rose mutters glumly.

Clare just grins brighter. “I wonder how Pete is going to take it!”

________________

“You sound like you’re from the North again.”

Clare nods, squinting her eyes behind her glasses. Her tongue pokes out from between her lips and Rose can’t help but find it _adorable._ “I do,” she says, twisting the screwdriver in her hand until the back of their telly pops off. She makes a little noise of excitement and immediately plunges her hands into the mess of wires and circuits, fiddling around with things Rose can’t see.

“You were from the North when I first met you,” she says instead. “The Old You, I mean. D’you remember?”

“How could I ever forget?” Clare shoots her a grin. “Best day of my life, that.”

“You weren’t even _alive_ then.”

“Well then, best day I can remember.”

It’s not really the answer Rose is expecting. Not that she’s _upset_ by the obvious change in mood and general demeanour from Clare’s last body to this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still confusing.

They haven’t talked about who she was, when she was Devon. They haven’t talked about the things they said to each other, the words and resentments they exchanged; haven’t talked about the fact that they haven’t lived together in months, or the fact that they’re maybe only barely-living together _now_. _Nothing_. Rose isn’t sure if they’ve both decided to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, or if her wife simply doesn’t think it worth dredging up again.

But Rose has never really been one for ignoring her problems. Now that Clare’s moved back in (though she’s still sleeping on the couch — which they _also_ haven’t talked about — while they try to readjust to life spent under the same roof, sharing the same kitchen and the same space again), Rose doesn’t think they can avoid talking about it forever.

She clears her throat. “Clare?”

“Hmm?”

“Are we… are we alright?” Clare stops moving, her blonde mop of hair still bent over the disassembled television she’s been working on. “The last time we talked about… about the Doctor, you—”

“I’m not him,” Clare cuts her off abruptly. “Not anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time. It’s… it’s taken me a while, to come to terms with that. But I know, now.” She puts her tools down carefully and sits back on her heels. Her pants flare wide at the bottom, covering her socked feet from Rose’s view. It makes her look young, younger than she actually is, and Rose’s eyes are drawn to her in a way they haven’t been in what feels like ages. “I’m not the Doctor,” Clare continues to speak, “and I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and moping about some part of me I’ve lost and actually try to figure out who it is I am now. I’m not sure who I am. I’ve never been like this before.” Her eyes are bright and her grin is wide. “But I’m excited to find out. Aren’t you? Should be fun.”

And Rose, for some strange reason, finds she is _also_ unduly excited. She can’t wait, either.

________________

She really thought it would be stranger, being married to a woman. Rose has to admit that it’s never really something she pondered before — she’s never been interested in birds before, only ever blokes, and that’s been about the end of things as far as she’s concerned. But living with Clare isn’t so different from living with all of her previous bodies. Except now they can share clothes, which is a delight to Clare, who has the same bizarre taste in fashion she’s _always_ had, only with much less of a frame of reference as to what fits her body type and her complexion. She’s never really been _stylish,_ but she does at _least_ want to blend in with the general world as much as she can. Rose laughs and helps her pick things that she likes from Rose’s closet for the time being, until they finally manage to make it out to the shops one weekend.

Otherwise, things are pretty much the same. Clare is funnier, much funnier than she had been when she’d been Devon. The simplest things seem to amaze her again. She’s rediscovered her energy, her vitality, her youth. She seems to have reignited her passion for adventures.

Her hands are soft; soft against Rose’s cheek, her palm. Clare seems more comfortable in this new body, more comfortable both with herself and with Rose. She likes to touch Rose; softly, innocently. Her fingers brush a gentle pattern against Rose’s skin — never rough, never demanding, never asking for anything more. It’s nice; it’s _really_ nice, actually. It feels quiet and intimate, and it’s nice to see a gentler side of her spouse, especially since her last body had seemed to want to withdraw, sequester, shelter itself against her and away from her. These quiet moments, with Clare running her fingers through Rose’s hair as they curl up on the couch together after a long day at work, they feel… they feel _natural,_ they feel _homey,_ but they also feel _new_ and _exciting_ and a bit confusing, if Rose is being honest.

But her wife’s hands never stray further than Rose’s hands, or her shoulders, or her hair, or the small of her back. She’ll hug Rose if she’s in a particularly good mood, or at the end of a very long day, but that’s all she’ll do. They haven’t kissed in over a year.

It’s… look, she’s never _fancied_ a woman before. She understands that Clare is only trying to be respectful, only trying to give Rose the space she needs — the space she _asked for_ — and Rose loves her for it. It’s kind of her, and wonderfully respectful. But… well, that’s the thing isn’t it? There’s always a _but._

Rose is used to… certain dynamics, in her relationships. She’s not used to being the pursuer, the instigator of contact or romance or sex. She’s not the one who asks men on dates; she’s the one who _gets_ asked on dates.

The rules of being married to a woman certainly are confusing. Rose wants to ask, wants to seek out advice for how to act, how to behave, how to navigate these strange new waters, but she’s not sure that looking up ‘How to be a good lesbian’ on the internet is exactly the way to go about it. (The results of that search are equal parts confusing and illuminating and intimidating.)

All she knows is that she’s tired of sleeping alone. She’s been sleeping by herself, living practically by herself, for a year. And now that Clare has come home…

There’s nothing wrong with living with her best friend. And, no matter what rough patches they’ve been through, no matter if she’s been a she or a he, a John or a Phillip or a Devon or a Clare, she’s _always_ been Rose’s best friend. And there’s nothing _wrong_ with living, platonically, with her mate.

But she’ll catch a glimpse of Clare, sprawled out on the couch in the early morning, her mouth open wide and her arm thrown over her eyes as she sleeps, soundly, dead to the world. She’ll catch a glimpse of the way Clare’s ear cuff catches the mid-afternoon sun, the way it sparkles and draws Rose’s eyes to it like she can’t help but stare. She’ll find herself admiring the lines of Clare’s body, the way her coat hangs off her shoulders, the way her suspenders frame her torso. And Rose will shiver, and her mouth will run dry, and she finds herself _wanting;_ wanting like she hasn’t wanted in a very long time.

And she’s a woman, now, which makes all of this a tad more complicated. But the longer they live together, the more time she has to get used to Clare as she is now, the more time they have to talk and to get to know each other again, the less she cares about the fact that she’s now got a _wife_ rather than a _husband._

She’s not sure what that means in terms of her and her sexuality, but the longer she has to think about it, the less she finds she cares about the specifics.

________________

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Rose huffs as she sets her glass of wine down heavily. Clare looks up at her from across the table, her fork raised half-way to her mouth. The lights in their flat are turned down low, and they’re eating by candlelight (Rose’s rather obtuse attempt at setting a romantic scene), but Clare, apparently, hasn’t picked up on the message. She’d come home from work to Rose’s candlelight-dinner-and-home-cooked-meal and, rather disappointingly, _hadn’t_ taken the hint and immediately ripped all the clothes from Rose’s body and started ravaging her. She’d just given her a tight hug and a murmured a soft ‘thank you, dear,’ into her ear before they sat down to eat.

Rose has had quite enough. “I nearly destroyed reality trying to find you,” she says, rather crossly, “I’m not about to let a stupid thing like whatever _bits_ you’ve got get in the way of that.”

“What are you talking abo— _mmmpphhh_.”

Rose grabs her wife by the neck of her shirt and drags her across the table, mashing their lips together for the first time in what feels like ages. It takes Clare a few seconds to sink into the kiss, but once she does, their plates and cutlery go clattering to the floor as she sweeps the table clean with one stroke of her arm. She yanks Rose onto the now-empty wood and immediately starts tearing at the buttons on her blouse, as if she’s scrambling for more skin, more contact, more _touch_ ; whatever she can get.

Rose arches into the feeling. When Clare’s lips slip down to her neck, nipping at the sensitive skin there, Rose hisses. “ _Finally_.”

________________

“Wow.”

“Yeah?”

“That was… _definitely_ different.”

“Good different?”

“Did you not hear me just now?” Rose laughs, almost incredulous. “ _Yes_ , Clare. Good different.”

She grins in that special, unique way she has — one side of her mouth pulling up higher than the other. “Brilliant,” she says, before she bends her head down and brings her mouth back to Rose’s sex.

They don’t talk much more that night.

________________

She doesn’t change again, after that. They keep expecting it to happen, but it never does. 2 years into Clare’s new face, her new body, and Rose starts waking up most mornings with her breath already catching in her throat. She peers over at her wife’s face, expecting a stranger to have taken her place, but none ever appears.

________________

“I wonder why,” Rose murmurs one day, her fingers tracing the bare skin of her wife’s chest. They’re snuggled up together under the comforters of the bed they’re sharing. They’re in a tiny little flat somewhere deep in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, on one of the many trips their work allows them take. This week they’re investigating some peculiar potentially-alien activity in Brazil’s second-largest city. Rose, who in all of her travels has never been to South America before, is adjusting very well to the climate. They’ve been together for nearly fifteen years, now, and Clare’s face has remained unchanged for the last five. “You reckon he hasn’t regenerated in a while?” (They both know who ‘he’ is. Neither one of them is very keen on using his name.) Rose grimaces. “Or, _she,_ rather.

Clare just shakes her head, bemused. “Somehow I doubt that. Maybe this body _can’t_ change, anymore. We already know that I haven’t actually been _regenerating_ — not in the same way. Maybe my cells just… can’t do it anymore. Or maybe she somehow accidentally severed our connection.” She slides forward on the bed and wraps her arms around Rose’s waist, and teases, “Or _maybe_ my body knows how much you like this face, and it’s choosing rather wisely to quit while it’s ahead.”

Rose laughs and slaps her wife lightly on the shoulder, but allows her to draw her in for a kiss. “Well, your body is right. You’re a babe.”

“You too.” Clare grins. “Look at us, couple of babes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Rose. More than I can ever hope to say.”

The sun sets outside of their window, but they’re too focused on each other to notice the waning light.

________________

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [ tumblr ](https://morningsound15.tumblr.com/)


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